U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters in Baghdad, "We're seeing a confident, capable Iraqi government using their capable Iraqi security forces to calm the storm that was inflamed by a horrendous, horrific terrorist attack yesterday against the Golden Mosque in Samarra."oh REALLY?
the NYT says "Iraqi forces did little to contain the violence. In at least one case in Baghdad, Iraqi witnesses said that policemen joined in attacking a mosque."
That dispute won't be simply or cleanly resolved, either, because America needs places like the UAE: Who else will allow the United States to base spy planes on its territory, or keep freighters to Iran from carrying the building blocks of nuclear weapons?
"I just don't understand all the negative reporting concerning the Katrina response. President Bush did the best he could, appointing the former head of the International Arabian Horse Association to be his point man in the event of a national disaster. We owe Bush, Michael Brown and FEMA an apology. After all, I haven't heard of a single Arabian horse that was lost in the storm."
-- Rich Barnes, Orland Park, Illinois
attribution
The average income of American families, after adjusting for inflation, declined by 2.3 percent in 2004 compared to 2001 while their net worth rose but at a slower pace.
--source
An Iraqi militant grouping led by al Qaeda blamed Baghdad's government and Iran on Thursday for the bombing of a major Shi'ite shrine and vowed reprisals after retaliatory attacks on Sunni Muslim mosques.
--source
The US military rejected the idea that a civil war is brewing in Iraq, saying it had confirmed only seven major attacks on mosques across the country.
--source
Gunmen have killed at least 127 people in Iraq in sectarian violence that flared after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine and reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques.
Another 47 bodies of men shot to death were discovered along with 10 burned out cars alongside a road near Nahrawan, southeast of Baghdad, police said.
--source
A White House assessment of the sluggish federal response to Hurricane Katrina calls for a better definition of the military's role during catastrophes, opening the door for the Pentagon to oversee government relief efforts in extreme cases, officials said Wednesday.
--source
The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future U.S. investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. It chose not to impose other, routine restrictions.
--source
The papers have passing word of a new report from a human-rights group, showing there have been about 50 deaths of detainees in U.S. custody where the cause of death was, as the AP puts it, "never announced or was reported as undetermined." Another 34 deaths were "confirmed or suspected" homicides. Soldiers in only 12 of the cases have faced punishment. The longest sentence: five months.
"Dear Mr President: In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO but HELL NO!"
--source
The Olympics have been a time-honored way of representing your country in a positive way. If U.S. athletes think they are doing that at this Olympics, they're sorely mistaken.
Whether it's a speed skater who spells team solely with an I, an ice skater who lost because he missed his ride or a snowboarder who didn't even feel the need to try hard and was cocky enough to show off and lose gold, Team U.S.A. has been living up to its reputation as rich, whiny, coddled, careless and outrageously arrogant.
This attitude was most apparent when our nation's biggest talker, a downhill skier, nonchalantly skipped most of the Super G-course study time and skied right into a gate. He had become famous for stating that "It's hard to ski when you're wasted," and he proved that it's just as hard when you're full of yourself.
Americans have done a poor job at representing their nation, and it's disgraceful to watch.
— Mike McGinn, Charles City
Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egypt's foreign minister, told her that Egypt believed funds to the Palestinian government should continue for an indefinite period, to give Hamas "time to develop their own ideas." Egypt gives little if any money to the Palestinians. Still, Washington considers Cairo's view to be influential, one reason Ms. Rice stopped here first.so that's now what? 4 countries that have defied bush and will not bow down to his demand to starve the palestinians until they do what he wants. i think hamas will only grow to hate us more for what we're doing to them. instead of building friendships, this administration relishes destroying them.
--SOURCE
More Americans than nearly ever before now say the war in Iraq is a "mistake" for the United States, according to a new Gallup poll. That figure now stands at 55%, up 4% point since late January. Only once before was the figure higher, at 59%, and that was during the period of overall pessimism right after Hurricane Katrina hit.
--source
TALLAHASSEE - Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis compared the way Republicans run Florida to how Fidel Castro runs Cuba as Democrats rallied supporters Tuesday for coming elections.
State workers fear retribution if they say what they think about how the state is run, said Davis, a U.S. representative from Tampa.
"I had a state worker put his arm around my shoulder, he looked around the room to make sure nobody was looking at him, and said "Jim, I'm for you.' What kind of country is that? I've had the same conversations with other people - in Havana," Davis said at the Florida Democratic Party's unity luncheon.
Later, he added, "There are people I run into every time I'm (in Tallahassee) who are afraid to express criticism of their own government and to have their voice heard. That is not democracy. That is not a healthy environment."
Republican officials criticized the comment.
Iran has offered to help finance the Palestinian Authority under a government run by the militant group Hamas, Iranian state radio reported on Wednesday.
Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, announced the offer after a meeting with the political leader of Hamas in Tehran.
The offer came after the United States and European Union said they would halt hundreds of millions in funding to Hamas unless the group rejects violence and accepts the existence of Israel.
"The United States proved that it would not support democracy after it cut its aid to the Palestinian government after Hamas won the elections," the radio report quoted Larijani as saying.
--read more
'He was using Enron like a damn ATM'sorta like bushco using the treasury like an atm
--source
TUESDAY, Feb. 21 (HealthDay News) -- New research adds a twist to the debate on the origins of sexual orientation, suggesting that the genetics of mothers of multiple gay sons act differently than those of other women.--source
Scientists found that almost one fourth of the mothers who had more than one gay son processed X chromosomes in their bodies in the same way. Normally, women randomly process the chromosomes in one of two ways -- half go one way, half go the other.
The research "confirms that there is a strong genetic basis for sexual orientation, and that for some gay men, genes on the X chromosome are involved," said study co-author Sven Bocklandt, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles.
The link between genetics and sexual orientation has been a hot topic for more than a decade as a few scientists have tried to find genes that might make people gay or straight. In the new study, Bocklandt and colleagues examined a phenomenon called "X-chromosome inactivation."
SAMARRA, Iraq - A large explosion heavily damaged the golden dome of one of Iraq’s most revered Shiite shrines Wednesday, spawning mass protests and sparking reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques. It was the third major attack against Shiite targets this week and threatened to stoke sectarian tensions.
Shiite leaders called for calm, but militants attacked Sunni mosques and a gunfight broke out between Shiite militiamen and guards at the offices of a Sunni political party in Basra. About 500 soldiers were sent to Sunni neighbourhoods in Baghdad to prevent clashes between Shiites and Sunnis, army Capt. Jassim al-Wahash said.
A leading Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, said 29 Sunni mosques had been attacked nationwide. He urged clerics and politicians to calm the situation “before it spins out of control.”
A government statement said several suspects had been detained in the early-morning attack on the Askariya shrine in this city about 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, and some of them “might have had been involved in carrying out the crime.”
--source
BAGHDAD, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr blamed the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the Iraqi town of Samarra on Wednesday on Sunni Arab militants and vowed to take revenge, a spokesman for Sadr said.MISSION ACCOMPLISHED MR PRESIDENT
"We will not only condemn and protest but we will act against those militants. If the Iraqi government does not do its job to defend the Iraqi people we are ready to do so," said Abdel Hadi al-Darajee of Sadr's position.
--source
"The bathhhouses became victims of the crisis they were so much a part of creating."
--Justin Ringold
attribution
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky., Feb. 18 -- Wearing leather chaps and vests covered in military patches, a band of motorcyclists rolls from one service member's funeral to another in hopes their respectful cheers and revving engines will drown out the insults of protesters.
Calling themselves the Patriot Guard Riders, they are made up of motorcycle club members who could no longer tolerate a Kansas-based fundamentalist church demonstrating at military funerals with signs reading, "Thank God for IEDs ." The bikers shield the families from the protesters and overshadow the jeers with patriotic chants and a display of red-white-and-blue flags.
"The most important thing we can do is let families know that the nation cares," said Don Woodrick, the group's Kentucky captain. "When a total stranger gets on a motorcycle in the middle of winter and drives 300 miles to hold a flag, that makes a powerful statement."
Across the nation, Patriot Guard riders number more than 5,000, and at least 14 states are considering laws aimed specifically at the funeral protest group led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, who believes U.S. deaths in Iraq are divine punishment for a country that, he says, harbors homosexuals.
The Bush administration said that journalists can be prosecuted under current espionage laws for receiving and publishing classified information but that such a step "would raise legitimate and serious issues and would not be undertaken lightly," according to a court filing made public this week.
...
Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, who first disclosed the government filing on his Web site, http://www.fas.org/sgp , said yesterday, "The idea that the government can penalize the receipt of proscribed information, and not just its unauthorized disclosure, is one that characterizes authoritarian societies, not mature democracies."
The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.
One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.
Have you heard they are doing a sequel to the movie “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”?
The cast is President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Bush will play the part of “Little Smirky Cowboy” and Cheney will play the part of “Shotgun Shaney,” the fastest shotgun in Texas (maybe not the most accurate).
First scene: They are driving a stagecoach to Baddog, Texas. The dialogue goes like this:
Little Smirky Cowboy: Git up thar on the stagecoach, Shotgun Shaney, and be durn careful of the shotgun, it goes off too easy.
Shotgun Shaney: That’s what you get once you buy one of them unreliable $1,000,000 shotguns from the Haliburton Company.
Little Smirky Cowboy: I know what you mean, I sat on one of their $15,000 toilet seats at the hotel last night and got a big splinter in my you know what. The pain was so bad, it durn near wiped the smirk off my face.
This is a sample of what will be a big hit movie. Haliburton is the producer, tickets are $2,000 each, popcorn, $500 a bag, and pop, $300.
-- KENT TAYLOR, Mason City
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. - President Bush says he wants to diversify the nation's energy mix to end America's dependence on foreign oil, yet some critics are wary of his commitment and point to cutbacks at a government energy laboratory here.--source
Two weeks ago, 32 workers, including eight researchers, were laid off at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. The lab helps develop the very renewable energy technologies the president is promoting.
Then, over the weekend, just before Bush's planned visit to the lab on Tuesday, the government restored the jobs. His trip to the renewable energy laboratory is part of a two-day, three-state trip to promote the energy proposals he outlined in his State of the Union address.
At the direction of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, $5 million was transferred to the Midwest Research Institute, the operating contractor for the lab, to get the workers back on the job, the Energy Department announced Monday.
In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.
The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.
But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.
Mr. Aid was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents — mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean War and the early cold war. He found that eight reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, "Foreign Relations of the United States."
"The stuff they pulled should never have been removed," he said. "Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous."
--source
"These are monies that belong to the Palestinians and should not be withheld," (u.n. envoy to the middle ease) de Soto told Reuters one day after Israel's cabinet announced a permanent halt to the monthly transfer of about $50 million in tax revenues Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians.
--source
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was mistaken when he said last week that the U.S. military had stopped the controversial practice of paying to plant stories in the Iraqi news media, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.
Bryan Whitman, a senior spokesman, said Rumsfeld had been incorrect in saying during an TV interview Friday that the practice had been halted in the wake of negative publicity in the United States. Rumsfeld made a similar assertion during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations that same day.
The U.S. commander in charge of the new U.S. training schools, who's celebrated in the Post's article and in the NYT, is quoted in the LAT praising and defending Iraq's interior minister, Bayan Jabr. That the same minister who's long been linked to Shiite militia and made excuses for his forces torturing suspects. One U.S. commander said members of a captured death squad were asked who they report to, "And they're telling us, 'Jabr.' "
... the U.S.'s top commander in Iraq now requires all American officers in the country to go through. The five-day class pushes officers to look for noncombat solutions and was heavily praised by the men who attended. The only problem, they said, is that they're just now learning about the new techniques, often halfway through their Iraq deployment. So, why is it being taught in Iraq and not the U.S. in before they ship out? The commander of the school explained the "Pentagon didn't do it for three years"; in other words, since the invasion. "That's why the boss said, 'Screw it, I'm doing it here.' "
--source
A State Department reorganization of analysts involved in preventing the spread of deadly weapons has spawned internal turmoil, with more than half a dozen career employees alleging in interviews that political appointees sought to punish long-term employees whose views they considered suspect.
Senior State Department officials deny that and say an investigation has found that the proper personnel practices were followed. But three officials involved in the reorganization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, acknowledge that a merger of two bureaus reduced the influence of employees who were viewed by some political appointees as disloyal to the administration's policies.
"There are a number of disgruntled employees who feel they have been shoved aside for political purposes. That's true," said one of these officials. "But there was rank insubordination on the part of these officers."
About a dozen top experts on nonproliferation have left the department in recent months, with many citing the reorganization as a reason.
The initial impression given to the public was that the detainees were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan and hence were prisoners of war. Now it turns out that most detainees were not captured in battle, but rather were turned over to U.S. authorities by Afghan warlords in exchange for cash bounties.
The U.S. ambassador accused Iran on Monday of providing training and weapons to Iraqi militias and extremist groups and criticized Tehran's demand that British forces immediately withdraw from the southern city of Basra.
--source
The governing council of Karbala province said Monday it was suspending contact with U.S. forces over the behavior of soldiers during a visit to the governor's office two days ago. The decision followed similar moves by leaders of Maysan and Basra provinces, which have frozen ties with British forces in southern Iraq.
"It's all of a piece with the man's record. He's afraid of accountability. That's why he's such a fan of self-protecting secrecy. That's why he's big on smearing government whistle-blowers. It's really just two sides of the same coin. He's afraid of accountability. It's the same reason why he's such a notorious prevaricator -- lies to avoid accountability."
--josh marshall, on cheney's class act of shooting a friend in the face with a shotgun at short range.
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Osama bin Laden vowed never to be captured alive and said the U.S. military had become as "barbaric" as Saddam Hussein in an audiotape reposted on a militant Islamic Web site after first being broadcast last month.just when bush needs a distraction, here comes his hero.
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Osama bin Laden vowed never to be captured alive and said the U.S. military had become as "barbaric" as Saddam Hussein in an audiotape reposted on a militant Islamic Web site after first being broadcast last month.
I love this newspaper. I had a good cry reading John Carlson’s “AIDS Stole Her Sons; Now 'Mom’s Home,’ Too,” and a big laugh at Rob Borsellino’s “Despite Sickness, Life Seems Worth Staying Around For.”
All in one edition, Feb. 15. Thanks, John and Rob, for starting my day right.
— Barbara Clark, Roland.
On Jan. 15 the Des Moines Register estimated that the cost of the George Bush War is now estimated at $2 trillion. A number so large it’s difficult to understand what that cost really means.
We are now starting to see the real cost .
A few days later, the front page had a number I could understand — 523. That’s the number of homeless children in the Des Moines school district, and it is what I believe to be a sign of the real cost of this administration.
Recently we saw the proposed Bush budget that basically increases everything for the military and cuts most domestic programs. The claim is that this is needed for my security. The reality is our current political path is creating more enemies and insecurity than resolving the issues.
We cannot afford this political direction any longer and deserve better.
— Tim Andersen, Polk City.
The White House is embarking on a vigorous defence of its decision to approve Dubai Ports World's Ј3.9bn (Ђ5.7bn) takeover of P&O, the UK ports operator, in the face of mounting congressional opposition to the deal.
“Don’t mess with me Condoleezza. Don’t mess with me, girl,”
--Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
The North Carolina Republican Party asked its members this week to send their church directories to the party, drawing furious protests from local and national religious leaders.
"Such a request is completely beyond the pale of what is acceptable," said the Rev. Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
During the 2004 presidential race, the Bush-Cheney campaign sent a similar request to Republican activists across the country. It asked churchgoers not only to furnish church directories to the campaign, but also to use their churches as a base for political organizing.
The tactic was roundly condemned by religious leaders across the political spectrum, including conservative evangelical Christians. Ten professors of ethics at major seminaries and universities wrote a letter to President Bush in August 2004 asking him to "repudiate the actions of your re-election campaign," and calling on both parties to "respect the integrity of all houses of worship."
Yesterday, the Greensboro News & Record reported that the North Carolina Republican Party was collecting church directories, and it quoted two local pastors as objecting to the practice. The Rev. Richard Byrd Jr. of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro said anyone who sent in a directory "would be betraying the trust of the membership," and the Rev. Ken Massey of the city's First Baptist Church said the request was "encroaching on sacred territory."
--source
The LAT fronts word that the Iraqi insurgents are operating more like coordinated political groups and are attempting to separate themselves from the foreign fighters who more indiscriminately attack civilians. The number of attacks has decreased, which could be a strategy to permit the political process to work. A terrorism expert describes it as a "process of the institutionalization of the insurgency".
"There are just certain rules in hunting you abide by, and when you do something like he did, that's a total disregard of rules for hunting."
"But I guess it doesn't surprise me Vice President Cheney would disregard the rules. He has disregarded the laws, the rules, all of his adult life . . . if he wants to swivel and shoot at a bird flying back toward another person, he can control it because rules don't apply to him."
--Senator Tom Harkin
attribution
I’m writing in response to Ed Buchanan’s letter in the Sunday edition regarding “Bush Speak.”
First of all, I believe that we should all accept the fact that Iraq had no WMDs. For heavens sake, it’s been (three) very long, very tragic years since the war began and to date, nothing.
As for Iran, I completely disagree with your assertion that both parties are discussing the use of military action. To begin with, our military is stretched so thin between Iraq and Afghanistan that we literally do not have the troop strength to invade, let alone conquer. (I suppose the next best option for the Neo Conservatives would be the use of nukes. I shudder to think how that option might be legitimized to the American people.)
As for the rest of the world, surely you don’t believe they would follow us blindly as they did with Iraq? Lord, we have wasted so much of our country’s integrity and goodwill that it will take decades to earn back the trust of many in this world.
Instead of Iraqi’s welcoming us with open arms, I believe the United States has become the catalyst in bringing together many disparate groups throughout the Middle East bent on destruction.
I remember a time, not that long ago, when the United States was viewed as a giving, caring, peaceful and tolerant nation. However, under the Bush regime we’re now viewed by many nations, friends and foes alike, as thugs and warmongers. But only when it serves our purpose, as Iraq does with its oil fields.
I take no pleasure in seeing where we’ve come as a nation — frankly I find it quite sad.
As for “hindsight is not wisdom” Mr. Buchanan, wisdom only comes when one is able to honestly look at their mistakes, learn from them and chart a different path. However, with one as obstinate as Mr. Bush, that different path may be as elusive as those weapons of mass destruction that were never in Iraq.
--Lori Johnson, Mason City
